His PhD thesis published in 1978 at Nanterre (Thèse de 3e cycle en sociologie),[2] was a sociological study called Archangels, warriors, military men and sportsmen.

[2] After writing his PhD thesis in 1978, Ehrenberg became interested in the anxieties of the individual in modern society, faced with the need for achievement and autonomy and the loss of social signposts and support systems.

[7] In 1998 he published a major work on clinical depression, La Fatigue d'être soi, which was translated into six languages,[10] including English (The Weariness of the Self, 2009).

In this work, which Rasmus Johnsen, assistant professor at Copenhagen Business School, describes as having "a reputation that makes it worthy of a position as a must-read for anyone with an interest in social philosophy", Ehrenberg argues that depression not simply a disease, and (as paraphrased by Johnsen), has risen "from its status as a secondary phenomenon often associated with other mental illnesses to a challenge that applies to everyone, [and] is a symptom, not necessarily of an increased social pressure on the subject, but of a fundamental transformation in the way individuals understand themselves".

He writes that, according to Eherenberg, "depression has replaced guilt as our defining psychic affliction", arising from a sense of inadequacy to perform to our full potential, which we are driven to achieve by modern western culture.